Sustainable Vegan Travel

Eco-Friendly Travel Gear (all Vegan too!)

Do you care about the environment but like traveling?Unfortunately, conventional travel tends to accumulate a lot of waste.

The plastic water bottles. The plastic grocery and shopping bags. The takeaway containers and coffee cups. You try to make coffee wherever you’re staying but then have to buy filters because there’s never any.

What’s an eco-conscious traveler to do?

With some sustainable and eco-friendly travel gear, you can quickly and easily reduce your environmental impact while traveling and at home. While we normally don’t condone buying lots of stuff, all of the things listed here are things that we use to avoid the accumulation of other stuff. (Modern society is quite the catch-22, isn’t it?)

We carry these everywhere, whether we are traveling or at home in Madrid. Apparently, staying hydrated is a very American thing, but we don’t care if drinking water marks us as a foreigner.

The Vapur bottles come in a variety of colors and two sizes. When they are empty, they roll up and take up a quarter of the space that a metal bottle does (and weigh much less). The clip even allows you to take them without a bag – just attach to a belt loop or pocket.

Enter this silicone reusable and collapsible cup! Boom – no more takeaway cups. Saving the environment while drinking coffee – Sam’s a big fan. An added benefit is that this cup is way more secure than a takeaway cup. Veren has literally ran with it (lid on) to catch a train and didn’t spill a drop.

Many coffee shops have also begun giving discounts for bringing your own cup. So eventually this cup pays for itself! Btw, if you’re not into the silicone collapsible kind, Keep Cup has a range of colors and sizes. Click here to see more information on Keep Cup.Combine it with the reusable steel filter below for an even more budget-friendly cup of joe.

Reusable bags are super handy to have packed neatly into your backpack at all times. Our favorite ones stuff into themselves in order to reduce to the size of a big baby fist.

Perfect for groceries, small purchases on the go, using as a laundry bag, etc. You never know when you might need one, so always take it with you – the habit is key. There are a variety of different colors and sizes – check here.

We don’t have as much of a need for reusable utensils as we either eat at home or sit down for a meal at a restaurant. We pretty much never get meals takeaway and it’s not really a thing here in Spain (though it’s catching on).

Still, in places like the U.S. and U.K. where takeaway and plastic utensils are the norm, reusable utensils are key for reducing waste while traveling.

This bamboo utensil set is durable, lightweight, and the carrying case is made from recycled plastic in a variety of different colors. The set comes with a fork, knife, spoon, and chopsticks for fellow chopstick lovers (is there anything better to eat rice or noodles with?!).

Eco-Traveler Luggage

We’re all about backpacks. Sure, you can drag something on wheels, but we prefer to keep our backs strong and retain agility in busy city streets. How often have you found yourself stuck behind wheelin’ and dealin’ luggage draggers? More often than we’d like.

We started using packing cubes last summer and now we don’t know how we ever lived without them. No more rifling through everything and ending up sitting helplessly surrounded by the entire contents of your backpack on the floor.

Packing cubes are of course reusable and come in a variety of colors and sizes. We recommend getting a set with various sizes so that you can play Tetris fitting them in.

Getting caught without a towel is something no traveler wants to experience (Sam’s been there). Normal towels are massive and take up a lot of space.We each have a micro towel and always travel with them. Practical and eco-friendly. There are tons of different sizes and colors – click here to check them out.

Eco-Friendly Travel Toiletries

These eco-friendly toiletries will help reduce your plastic use AND save you money. Just what we like to hear.

Ladies! If you don’t have a menstrual cup yet, you’re in for a life-changing experience (Sam speaks from experience). It takes a little getting used to at first, but the benefits far outweigh the transition period (pun intended).

Not only do you avoid making all that messy monthly tampon/pad waste, but using a cup is more hygienic, and lasts up to 10 (check) hours per, er, use. It saves you money in the long run and you never have to worry about getting caught without a tampon or pad again. For more information about menstrual cups and how to choose the best one, head to this extensive guide on Menstrual Cup Site. Just make sure to get the right size (depends on whether you’ve had children or not).

Unfortunately, many menstrual cups are tested on animals (including kitties). Luckily, vegan Youtuber Rehana Jomeen has done extensive research and shares her findings in her video on 7 vegan menstrual cups. Sam has and recommends the Moon Cup. The Diva Cup – arguably the most popular menstrual cup in the U.S., is also vegan.

Why bamboo toothbrushes? Because unlike traditional plastic toothbrushes which end up sitting in landfills, bamboo toothbrushes are biodegradable. Read more about why bamboo toothbrushes are awesome here.

Reef Friendly Sunscreen

Sadly most typical drugstore sunscreens (like Coppertone or Banana Boat) are very bad for the environment. They contain a chemical, oxybenzone, which poisons and damages coral reefs – even in minuscule quantities. Read more in The Guardian here.

Luckily, there are many environmentally friendly and vegan sunscreens available. Teva and 3rd Rock have popular ones or check this extensive list of vegan and natural sunscreens

Unfortunately all of the affordable natural sunscreens that we found still come in plastic, so if you prefer DIY, check out this mineral sunscreen recipe by Going Zero Waste.

Lush is a favorite in the vegan and eco-conscious crowd. 80% of their products are vegan (some contain honey, milk or eggs) – you can read more in their FAQ. They have everything from solid shampoo (perfect for traveling), solid perfume, toothpaste tablets, and more.

Lush also uses as little packaging as possible – if you buy their products in a store, you can buy many things “naked” aka, without any packaging at all. They contribute to carbon offset programs, don’t use palm oil, work to reduce their energy consumption, and more. Read about their Green Policy here.

The one downside of Lush is that their products are more expensive than typical “drugstore” cosmetic and toiletries, but this reflects the true cost of sustainable business practices.

Eco-Friendly Clothing

We buy most of our clothing at thrift shops. That way we’re not contributing to the demand, using clothing that would have otherwise been thrown away, and saving tons of money.

Still, sometimes we come across cool products that we end up buying new.

Bamboo Clothing

While house sitting in Florence last Christmas, we stumbled on a vegan eco-shop in the heart of the old city. They had tons of cool stuff, from shoes made from plastic bottles to tons of bamboo clothing. We both left with a piece of bamboo clothing and we wish we had gotten more. Bamboo clothes are surprisingly soft, yet durable and breathable.

We both have and swear by HiTec hiking boots. Sam wore hers for over 1000 km (500 miles) on the Camino de Santiago, and they are still going strong. You can find their vegan boots on their website, or on Amazon. Their vegan range includes models Skamania (Veren has this one), Hillside, and Logan.

Eco-Friendly Electronics

Staying connected is a must for many travelers, especially those of the digital nomad variety, who work while they travel. While we don’t consider ourselves nomads as we have a home base in Madrid, we still travel frequently in the summers, holidays, and weekends.

While we love physical books, living abroad and traveling frequently means we can’t accumulate them. Even if you live in one place, books can quickly turn into clutter that you’ll never read again. We both have Kindle Paperwhites and having them skyrocketed our reading.

They’re also great for language learning as you download a dictionary and when you highlight a word, the translation comes up, along with some examples of the word used in sentences. These words are stored in a vocabulary list on the Kindle that you can then access later.

Smartphone

While smartphones get their fair share of hate because of selfie-sticks and people who never look up from their phones, smartphones are extremely useful for the modern traveler.

Google Maps, HappyCow, and FourSquare help us find delicious vegan restaurants around the world. We rent bikes via apps to explore new cities and we connect and meet up with other like-minded travelers on Instagram and Couchsurfing. We navigate in different languages using Google Translate.

Unfortunately, most smartphone companies are notoriously unethical due to human rights violations, environmental impact, usage of conflict minerals, and more. Fairphone is the world’s first ethical smartphone, but the demand has been so high that all orders are currently on hold. Buying a secondhand phone on Amazon reduces demand and reuses products that would otherwise end up polluting the earth in a landfill.

Memberships for Sustainable Long-Term Travel

No surprises here that we recommend getting a house sitting membership, as we are huge advocates for house sitting as a sustainable and alternative way to travel.

With house sitting, you cut out the middleman of (usually not eco-friendly) hotels and have a unique experience staying in a local’s home. Plus, pet cuddles! Check out our guide on how to get started as a house sitter.

Read more in our comprehensive TrustedHousesitters Review for more information and tips on how to use the site. For a 10% discount, use our exclusive TrustedHousesitters discount code, ALTERNATIVE10 when signing up through this special link.

Damn right that’s artisan vegan cheese – the cat is in disbelief too.If you’re looking for even more ways to be eco-friendly, here’s one more: EAT fewer ANIMAL PRODUCTS. 😉

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Posts written by Sam and Veren are collaborative, informative posts that we write and edit together. These posts include our vegan city guides and informative house sitting and expat life in Spain posts.

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About Us

Hi! We're Sam and Veren, a couple originally from New York that is now based in Madrid, Spain. We slow travel on a budget via housesitting and aim to show that neither traveling nor eating vegan has to be expensive or difficult.

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